Prehistoric Fossil Perplexes Scientific Community

On Thursday archeologists announced the finding of a fossilized human jawbone in a collapsed cave off the Northern Coast of Israel that is threatening to rewrite the lineage and narrative of human migration out of Africa. The jawbone, said to be between 175,000 to 200,000 years old, suggests that Homo Sapien migration may have occurred a full 75,000 years prior to what the scientific community has, until now, agreed upon. With recent excavations at Jebel Irhoud (Oldest Homo Sapien Found In Morroco) as well as the Turkish site Gobekli Tepe (World’s First Temple), a monument that predates Stonehenge by 6,000 years, the understanding of our history as humans on this planet grows older and more complex every day.

Recent developments in philosophy & material advancements in technology have provided a consensus that places Homo Sapiens first known whereabouts in Northwestern Africa almost 300,000 years ago. This new discovery poses serious questions to the agreed upon narrative of Homo Sapien’s migratory patterns into Eurasia. The two prevailing modern schools of scientific thought stand in opposition to each other. One model suggests that humans left Africa in a mass migration close to 60,000 years ago while other scientists believe there was a gradual influx of smaller communities that seeped out of Africa further back almost 120,000 years ago. If nothing else, this fossilized finding proves that we are often still in the dark when pinpointing our shared history.

Archaeologists at the site have found evidence that suggests these early humans were hunter-gatherer communities that were capable of building fire & working with small tools similar to those found in Africa during the same time period. In the abstract on the discovery (ScienceMag – Israel Fossils Abstract) University of Tel Aviv Prof. Israel Hershkovitz summarized the new information:

This finding changes our view on modern human dispersal and is consistent with recent genetic studies, which have posited the possibility of an earlier dispersal of Homo sapiens around 220,000 years ago.

Binghamton University Anthropology professor and co-author of the study, Rolf Quam, suggests that the Eastern Mediterranean corridor could have been a thoroughfare and meeting place for markets, ideas, and interbreeding. With 1-4% of modern Europeans carrying the genetic DNA of Neanderthal man, these findings appear to confirm a meeting of minds and bodies far earlier than we had previously surmised. The methods used to date the new material and the team behind the research can be seen on this wonderful clip: Tel Aviv Archeologists Discuss Findings

One of the great champions of modern scientific and philosophical skepticism is the brilliant amateur archeologist and historian Graham Hancock. In his books he often refers to humans as “A Species with Amnesia” and the age of our myths continue to get older and more bizarre with each passing year. In the last decade alone major discoveries have been made in Jebel Irhoud Morroco & Daoxian China that contest the oldest know Homo Sapien and the furthest known migration of our earliest ancestors to the Far East.

Archeologists found the specimen in the Misliya Cave on the Western slopes of Israel’s Mount Carmel. Though scientists are not able to identify whether the specimen belonged to a male or female we do know that it shares characteristics close to the modern-day Homo Sapien. The complex flint tools and grass bedding that have also been uncovered at the site appear to be some of the earliest ever discovered and beg the question of what happened to these sophisticated beings who seem to have vanished.

As children, we are often taught a linear history of human evolution without many bumps or skips along the road. In many ways, it probably makes us all a lot more comfortable with the ever winding and strange story of our existence. New discoveries that predate our understanding of humankind beg us all to reanalyze our own beliefs and understandings about how we became to be. What’s in a jawbone? A new history book apparently.